Reporter’s Notebook: Turkeys got pardoned. Will the Jan. 6 defendants get the same treatment?

Hi, and happy Tuesday. There are 55 days until President-elect Trump is sworn back into office, and there are two days until Thanksgiving. Surely, Americans, there will be no arguing about politics over that turkey dinner come Thursday, right? Right?!

In a brief ceremony on the White House South Lawn on Monday, President Biden, continuing a decades-old presidential tradition, pardoned two 40-plus-pound turkeys from the Thanksgiving table. The birds, Peach and Blossom — named in honor of the peach blossom, the official flower of Biden’s home state of Delaware — were hatched in Minnesota and traveled two days to the nation’s capital.

Biden, sporting a pair of aviator sunglasses, joked that Peach lives by the motto “Keep calm and gobble on,” and that Blossom abides by: “No fowl play, just Minnesota nice.” As president, Biden has granted clemency to three other pairs of turkeys: Peanut Butter and Jelly, Chocolate and Chip, and Liberty and Bell.

“Based on their temperament and commitment to being productive members of society,” Biden said, “I hereby pardon Peach and Blossom.”

The turkey clemency came as questions swirl about whether Trump will make good on a campaign trail promise to pardon rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — including numerous Californians, like David Dempsey of Van Nuys, who was sentenced in August to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to assaulting a law enforcement officer with a dangerous weapon and breaching the seat of Congress.

“We’re all on our heels and preparing for anything — whether that is nothing happening, or more individualized relief, or a blanket pardon,” Amy Collins, a Washington-based attorney who represents several Jan. 6 defendants, including Dempsey, told The Times.

Gaetz blames McCarthy

After a flurry of nominations in recent days, Trump now has chosen most of the people he wants to serve on his Cabinet — including Pam Bondi, the former attorney general of Florida whom he named as his pick for attorney general just hours after former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz withdrew from the nomination on Thursday, saying he did not want to be a “distraction” for the Trump transition.

Gaetz’s decision came as Senate Republicans voiced mounting concerns with him amid a swirling ethics probe into allegations that he had participated in drug-fueled sex parties with underage girls. Many members of the Senate had said they wanted to know more about the House ethics report before voting in what was sure to have been a messy confirmation hearing.

Still, Gaetz said he blames one man for the pushback: former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the Bakersfield Republican.

Gaetz, a hard-right Republican who complained that McCarthy worked across the political aisle too often, played a central role in ousting him last year from the speaker’s position — and McCarthy has made his ire for Gaetz clear since then.

“I was dealing with a politically motivated body. They didn’t like me because of what I did to Kevin McCarthy,” Gaetz said of the Senate in an interview with conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk late last week. “All of them were handpicked by Kevin McCarthy. They had an ax to grind. This was going to serve as at least enough of a basis to delay my confirmation as attorney general.”

He added: “If the things that [were in] the ethics report were true, I would be under indictment and probably in a prison cell, but of course they’re false.”

Gaetz, who resigned from the current 118th Congress this month, also ended speculation that he might return to the House since he was just reelected to serve in the next Congress. He said he will not return.

Farmers backed Trump. Their workers could be deported

California farmers, some of the state’s most enthusiastic Trump supporters, could see their workforce decimated by the incoming president’s plans to carry out mass deportations of immigrants in the country illegally.

At least half of California’s 162,000 farm workers are undocumented, according to estimates from the federal Department of Labor and research conducted by UC Merced. If farmers do not have enough workers, and food is left to rot in the fields, grocery prices could spike.

“And yet, farmers are not railing in protest,” The Times reported. “Many say they expect the president will support their workforce needs, either through a robust legalization program for workers already here or by leaving farms be and focusing enforcement elsewhere.”

Farmers also are pushing the government to make it easier to import temporary guest workers under the H-2A visa program that allows farms to hire seasonal agricultural workers when the domestic labor supply falls short.

Farmworkers and their advocates, though, are anxious, about both deportations and an expansion of guest worker programs that previously have resulted in complaints about shorted paychecks, unpaid travel time and unsafe housing.

Newsom wants to give EV rebates if Trump kills them

Gov. Gavin Newsom says California is prepared to offer state tax rebates for electric vehicle purchases if Trump to ends the federal EV tax credit of up to $7,500 per car or truck.

The Democratic governor said in a statement Monday that state-funded rebates “could come from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which is funded by polluters under the state’s cap-and-trade program.”

That fund pays for clean transportation, sustainable housing, renewable energy, water recycling and other programs — and any new electric vehicle rebates would have to compete with and take money from those other programs.

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, a key adviser and financial backer of the incoming president has said he supports ending consumer tax credits for electric vehicles.

Stay golden and pass the mashed potatoes,
Hailey Branson-Potts

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